By 1993, the acid jazz scene was garnering much more awareness in the US and labels here were beginning to take notice with the success of Jamiroquai and Brand New Heavies. Most of the larger UK acts on majors were coming out of imprints on Polygram such as Talking Loud and FFRR. A subsidiary of Polygram US was London Records, which also had Payday Records. Payday Records was run by Patrick Moxie, who at the time also managed Gangstarr – he’s now the owner of Ultra Records.

Given that acid jazz was one of our primary areas of specialty, Patrick approached us about putting together a compilation for him. Naturally, we wanted to the name to be in line with our brand, so we called the compilation “Giant Steps,” adding the “s” on the end to differentiate a bit from “Giant Step.”